I love physics: a writer's lament

By Ann Daly

September 11, 2015Updated: September 14, 2015 11:55am

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Eileen Pollack entered Yale University in the mid-1970s as one of the first two women to major in physics. She had come from a rural high school in the heart of the Jewish Catskills, where she was denied entry into the accelerated track in physics and math. But Pollack taught herself enough to ace the necessary Advanced Placement exams and gain admission to a top university.

But after graduating summa cum laude from Yale, Pollack made an "embarrassed exit from the profession" for English, at which she also excelled. Instead of applying for a physics graduate program, she accepted a Marshall Fellowship to read Literature and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

"Although no single obstacle caused me to give up or fail, the constant need to jump so many hurdles wore me down," Pollack writes. "If a single professor had said, 'You know, Eileen, you really are quite good at physics,' I would have been quite good at physics. In fact, I would have been quite great at physics."

More Information

'The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys' Club'

By Eileen Pollack.

Beacon Press, 266 pp., $27.95.

Despite her objective success in physics - the most esoteric of the esoteric sciences - Pollack felt she was a failure. Her detailed account of those years at Yale, a textbook example of women's "disease to please" and crippling perfectionism, is a painful read.

"The Only Woman in the Room," Pollack's new book, is her lament, her "I coulda been a contender." After recounting her college experience, she goes back to Yale and her K-12 schools in Liberty, N.Y., to figure out why she quit physics.

Pollack, now a professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, discovers that her teachers never encouraged anyone - male or female.

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"I can help students with the logic of 'how does one approach things,' " explains her quantum mechanics professor. "But I don't know if I can provide mentoring at the emotional level."

Thirty to forty percent of the physics and physics-related majors at Yale are now female, Pollack reports. Twenty percent of all physics doctorates in the country are now awarded to women. Despite the subtle or not-so-subtle sexist messages they receive in high school, young women are managing to find their way into college physics programs.

But once there, women still find an unlevel playing field:

"Most science and math instructors believe they are being evenhanded in their refusal to encourage anyone, not understanding that any white male who grows up in this country already receives encouragement for his ambitions, if only in the form of the prevailing image of scientists as white and male," Pollack observes.

In her day, Pollack was "the only woman in the room," an obvious outlier forced to conform to the old boys' club. (Pollack even went through a pipe-and-fedora phase.) As research explains, a lone woman is ignored, while a pair of women is perceived as threatening. It's when we get to "the rule of three" that women can most effectively begin to work on their own terms and, perhaps, even change the culture.

The stars of Pollack's book are the trio of young female physics students whom she interviews back at Liberty High.

These young women are fearless, full of chutzpah and in love with science. One, proclaiming herself "on the girlie side," loves to see the shock on people's faces when she says she wants to become a high school science teacher. Another enjoys being good at solving problems. The third, Amanda, wants to be a surgeon. Nothing short of losing her hands, she says, will deter her.

What inspired Amanda? Not a Dad with a stack of LEGOs, but a Mom who's a math teacher. "Amanda and her friends used to spend Friday nights with Amanda's mom," Pollock reports, "because she made doing math so much fun."

They admit, "girls are still mean," so their friends are mostly guys. "The cool kids are now the smart kids," Amanda confides to her skeptical elder. Smart kids are dancing at homecoming, wearing "I LOVE MATH" T-shirts without recrimination, and using "dork" as a term of endearment. Amanda plays soccer, and all the dorks are into some kind of music or art.

Somehow, these young women have managed to avoid the traditional female double-consciousness: always looking at themselves being looked at. They shall inherit the physics lab.

Ann Daly, author of "Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America," is an essayist specializing in women and women's history.